Loyalty Vision

Background

At Amex, there were three distinct teams working on the perks that come with a card: Benefits, Rewards and Offers. Rewards are the points that Card Members can collect and redeem for things like travel and gift cards. Benefits include perks that come with a card that go beyond rewards such as access to airport lounges and early access to events. Offers work similar to coupons and offer discounts with partner merchants.

Research showed that Card Members think about their Benefits, Rewards and Offers as one big bucket of perks and often conflated them. The digital experience did not reflect this mental model and instead the perks were disconnected from each other.

Challenge

The design challenge was to take the Benefits, Rewards and Offers and create a holistic experience….to create BRO.

Research Approach

The research approach included”

- Stakeholder interviews across the different teams to better understand the goals of each team and what gaps existed.

- Remote Interviews with 28 Card Members to better understand their perceptions, opinions, beliefs and attitudes as it relates to their perks.

- A survey that included a ranking exercise which perks were most valuable to Card Members across different card types.

2. Meet Card Members where they’re at. Be proactive in communicating with them about their perks. Consider how notifications, email, chat and customer service play a role in a Card Members experience with their perks.

3. Aid Card Members in understanding the value of their membership over time. Visualizations such as trackers and progress meters help Card Members understand the value of their perks.

4. High-fee CMs are already doing a cross-benefit analysis of the monetary value of their card - proactively communicate this value through digital channels.

5. Mitigate fear of using unfamiliar perks by reducing confusion and opacity around how they work. Utilize clearer language, labels and hierarchy of information to better communicate perks.

Outcomes

Insights from the research were used to design a POA design. The design and research team took the a clickable prototype into a lab with Card Members to get feedback. What we learned:

2. Driving action by incorporating a journey into the experience (e.g. booking tool for travel and dining) was very well received.

The designs are now being iterated upon to take back into testing. With a launch goal for Q4.

Kidney Stone Patient Journey

The Ask:

A premium maker of interventional medical devices, asked frog to help identify & express innovative opportunities that benefit patients & HCPs along the Kidney Stone journey, a condition on the rise that is an infamously confusing and difficult one to manage.

Understanding and targeting patients is vastly unknown territory for the company. At the same time, they are in situation in which diversification of services and audiences is vital to continued success. As a team we had to take that into consideration and ensure that our deliverables answered some ambiguous, tough questions - primarily, imagining what is next for our client through monetizable solutions that fall at the intersection of needs for patients and HCPs.

The Approach:

Over the course of a 9 week Research and Strategy program, the team sought to understand and map the journey of the Kidney Stone patient in order to identify opportunities for innovation that would help both patients and the HCPs they interact with. We spoke to patients, Urologists, ER doctors, OR Directors and Cysto Nurses in order to document the experience. We focused on bringing to life 3 key concepts and their service models, expressing a new service ecosystem.

We focused on 3 Opportunity Areas to produce an ecosystem of concepts:

1. Milestone: The Data & Software play

An education and tracking platform that engages and informs patients while capturing important data for physicians.

2. Kitney: The Product Play

A DIY diagnostic kit that empowers patients to identify and cope with stones and shortens the time to treatment

3. Rolling Stone: The Service Play

A team of stone care professionals that provide patients more immediate, accessible, and cost-effective care.

Saving & Investment Tool Research

The Ask:

frog was engaged in a 12-week project to define the value proposition and design a long term strategy for a Saving & Investment Tool. After designing two concept directions, the team conducted research with consumers. The goals of the research included gaining feedback on the product's value proposition and evaluate the two concept directions. The strengths and weaknesses of the concept models would be evaluated in order to inform and inspire the next iteration of the design process.

The Research Approach:

1. We invited 11 people in and around the NYC area that span from age 20–early 40s, self-proclaimed “regular savers and investors."

2. Key Activities included an in-depth conversation, received feedback on user scenario storyboard that illustrated key touch point of the service, an on-boarding co-creation activity using a paper prototype, evaluative research of an interactive prototype, and a dot-voting exercise to identify the best and worst features of the concept models.

Insights:

1. People generally see their investments as short-term gambles or long-term retirement funds, but are less aware of investment as a tool for mid-term savings.

2. Fear around investing is paralyzing. The unknown, losing money and self doubt prevents people from getting involved.

3. Although goals are valuable in motivating people to save, they need flexibility when defining them.

4. Savings maximizer even resonates with the pros because it mirrors how they already think about and organize their money.

The Solution:

What we found is that both concept models had major strengths. The strengths of the first "Utility" concept included a familiar Landing Page with helpful hierarchy, in an at-a-glance view. The second "Experience" concept allowed for more control to drill deeper for information of goals. The solution was a model that included the strengths of each. The home page from the utility model would be utilized with the ability to drill into goals.

Connected Home Experience Research

The Ask:

Introduce an in-home connectivity platform that delivers value to customers by making their lives easier, is differentiated in the marketplace, and drives preference and adoption for a telecommunications company's services.

Project Goals:

1. Define the customer experience for adding a new sensor and/or device.

The purpose of the research was to fortify our understanding of the setup process—including the Purchase, Unboxing, Installation & Registration, Configuration and Enablement steps—along with details of Daily Use. The approach included setting up moments from the User Scenarios in a home/apartment setting and using the devices over time. We then conducted an experience audit and synthesized what we learned to highlight the pain points and findings.

Insights:

`1. Most of the pain points in the setup experience are not caused by the app/platform, but incidental factors.

2. The current platforms suggest that home automation is for everyone, but assume a high level of tech and DIY fluency.

3. The current platforms do not teach the user about themselves effectively.

4. Customer support tries to fill the gaps, but there’s never enough help.

5. The result of experiential noise is feeling disoriented.

The Solution:

The idea of “running” experiences in/on the home, analogous to running an app on a smartphone, can help push users beyond point solutions to more sophisticated, monetizable connected home experiences. The Experience Journey and Key Concepts include the major milestones along the User Journey including Purchase, Unboxing, Installation & Registration, Calibration, Enablement, and Extension.

Future Bar Experience Prototyping

Background:

The beer landscape has shifted. Consumers today look at their experiences as a quest for authenticity, giving rise to craft beer across the consumer landscape, effectively fragmenting the marketplace.

After over 600 years of stagnant innovation in the world of beer one of the largest global breweries partnered with frog and architecture/hospitality partner AvroKo to elevate the beer category with a new premium beer experience to better serve the wants and needs of their target audience.

The approach:

Over the course of nine months frog employed several methodologies including contextual interviews, a frogTHINK workshop, consumer validation and experience prototyping.

The experience prototyping was led by Cassandra along with a team of visual and industrial designers. The purpose of the experience prototype was to evaluate user's perceptions of signature moments of the bar concept as part of a larger iterative design process. The team collaboratively built a large scale prototype of the bar at the frog studio in NYC. Three spaces were created along with furniture, light fixtures,a and prototypes of the two most significant signature moments: the Draught Hall bar and trolley. Other moments included menu ordering, signaling wait staff, and payment.

The Plan:

4 x 2hr Friendship Groups (Total 16 friends)

2 x 2.5 hr Wait Staff Groups (Total 10 Servers)

Physical Prototype at the frog office, NY

The testing objectives include comprehension of the overall concept and specific signature moments with regard to product (beer), social behavior, and the space itself. The purpose of the research is to inspire and inform the design process and the next phase of design iteration.

The Key Insights:

1. Innovation should function as a facilitator for the social experience.

2. Concept-based experiences are for occasional entertainment rather than “go-to” social spots.

3. When it comes to premium and seamless service, there is no proxy for personal interactions.

The Results:

A set of twelve signature experience recommendations for the final design of the Bar Concept including informing and inspiring the bar table and trolleys.

X-Porte Ultrasound Kiosk Research

The goal of the project was to redesign Sonosite’s M2 portable ultrasound machine. Rather than focus solely on the functional feature sets, the research aimed to understand the emotional journey physicians go through interacting with the device, then mapped the specific feature sets that would align with their emotions. The holistic approach was a collaboration amongst SonoSite designers and engineers, MNML designers and Bassett & Partner’s ethnographers and strategists to conduct immersive, ethnographic research with a broad range of ultrasound stakeholders across global markets.

The key insight identified is that despite the pressures of a highly stressful healthcare environment, physicians described an emotional rush of confidence when ultrasound helped them identify the problem so they could prescribe recommended care. The team anchored the M2’s strategy around the idea of "Surge of Confidence." The result is the SonoSite X-Porte Ultrasound Kiosk, the first ever point-of-care ultrasound system to integrate advanced signal processing for high resolution imaging, 3D animated clinical guides, and a cutting-edge, multi-gestural user interface.

The User Research conducted for the SonoSite X-Porte won an IDSA IDEA award in 2014.

Confidence: Insight Video

Field Research

The project included interviewing 45 physicians, students, and key stakeholders in the US, Canada, Europe, and Japan.

Observations

The field research included having physicians walk us through their ultrasound journey both from a practical and emotional point of view

Collaboration

A series of mini workshops were conducted with stakeholders to collect their needs.

Surge of Confidence

The key insight was that users feel a Surge of Confidence when acquiring an image.

User Journey

The user feels highs and lows in their journey and until they get to image acquisition the other steps are the "pain along the path."

X-Porte: Versatile

The X-Porte was developed to give users the ability to adjust the machine to a variety of scenarios.

X-Porte: Easy Interaction

X-Porte was designed to give direct manipulation interaction to ultrasound visualization. The cockpit-like screen interaction was ergonomically designed to give users optimal one-handed control access while using transducers on patients. Introducing the touchscreen also helped eliminate unnecessary part lines on the hardware for optimal cleaning and infection control.

X-Porte: Slender

X-Porte esigned to have a slender footprint thus making it easier to navigate in hallways and bedsides at the most critical times.